 |
| Why We Celebrate Our Holidays by Mary I. Curtis (1924) |
In the chilly spring of 1888, James Russell Lowell was invited to give an address at the newly established Reform Club of New York.
A well-known political and social observer, the bushy-bearded Lowell had honed his intellect since graduating from Harvard Law School in 1842. Poet and essayist, diplomat and abolitionist; a linguistics scholar who became the first editor of the Atlantic Monthly, Lowell moved in distinguished literary circles.
Lowell also drew contempt. Some of his peers dismissed him as a moody lightweight who espoused convenient, inconsistent arguments. He and the Transcendentalist author Margaret Fuller detested each other. “Posterity will not remember him,” she once wrote.
However, in his remarks at the Reform Club, just a few years before his death at age 72, Lowell identified an interesting twist in American culture. It seems especially intriguing now, when we face controversial interpretations of patriotism and American history.
Up until the start of the Civil War, Lowell told the elite audience, Americans were filled with optimism, “seeing the future in rose-color.”
He had an explanation for this antebellum anticipation of endless American glory.
“The hues of our dawn had scarcely faded from the sky. Men were still living who had seen the face and heard the voice of the most august personage in our history.”
Did he mean George Washington? I believe so.
“This was what may be called the Fourth of
July period of our history,” Lowell said.
During that time, he explained, Americans were still close to the epochal events of the past. Inevitably, many traditions had fallen by the wayside. A few old holidays—once momentous celebrations—had lost their meaning, and industrialization chipped away at community cohesion.
Yet thousands of Americans still remembered the big events or held onto the 18th- and 19th-century stories recounted by people who were there in the moment. For many years, those memories drove profound feelings of citizenship.
Of course we could not live perpetually in the Fourth of July period, but it continued to glimmer.
During the Bicentennial in 1976, the writer
Brendan Gill mused aloud that we possess founding documents but no recordings
of founding voices. After a pause, his friend Ned announced: “I have heard an
eighteenth-century voice.”
“We pressed him to tell us how that was possible,” Gill
recalled. ‘I was born in 1883,’ Ned said, ‘and I was brought up in part by my
great-grandmother, who as a little girl was taken down to the new Federal Hall,
on Wall Street, to observe Washington being sworn in as the first President of
the United States. That was in 1790.’”
 |
| Statue of George Washington Federal Hall, New York City (National Park Service) |
Through these remarkable leaps, 20th century Americans could touch the deep past. My mother liked to recall a parade in the 1930s where she watched veterans of the Grand Army of the Republic march by.
Really? I’d ask, dubiously.
Yes, really. In fact, there is a newsreel
of the parade. On Memorial Day 1935, Civil War veterans were among the soldiers
who marched up Broadway toward the Soldiers and Sailors Monument in Riverside
Park.
 |
| Universal Newspaper Newsreel, May 1935 |
 |
| G.A.R. veterans at the 1935 parade |
Even today, the past may resonate unexpectedly, unprompted by a monument, fireworks or a battle reenactment. You might be driving on Interstate 435, a beltway that surrounds the Kansas City metropolitan area. Along the way, the road slopes down to a marsh. The land is undeveloped although not primeval. A low bridge carries you across the Missouri River.
You might recall “Shenandoah,” a popular 19th-century
American folksong.
Oh,
Shenandoah, I long to see you,
Away,
you rolling river
Oh,
Shenandoah, I long to see you,
Away,
I’m bound away, ’cross the wide Missouri.
“Shenandoah” is a lilting river ballad
filled with love and longing. Any online search will tell you that. Shenandoah
was an Indian woman whom the riverboat captain had to leave behind.
And there you are, back in time and place, brushing up against the Fourth of July period of our history.
https://www.throughthehourglass.com/2026/07/now-and-then.html
No comments:
Post a Comment